By Kevin Kolodziejski
It’s not exactly a news flash. Energy and focus are finite.
In fact, only a crackpot (or maybe an empty-stomached cyclist who’s just consumed a half pot of coffee before an early-morning ride) would challenge that. And only a totally cracked pot (or maybe that same cyclist if he consumes a full pot of Irish coffee later that morning) would argue against the upshot of that. That it’s both acceptable and sensible to put forth a half-hearted effort sometimes.
While that’s not exactly a news flash either, it logically leads to a questions that’s not always easy to answer: “When exactly is it okay to be halfhearted instead of wholehearted?”
The Answer Can Be Complicated
Further complicating matters is that sometimes — it’s probably safe to say most times — doing things halfheartedly is also the easy way out. So easy, actually, that if you don’t remind yourself of that fact regularly, doing anything hard and wholeheartedly (like attacking that mile climb no more than a mile from your house) can soon become a distant memory. If you are in need of such a reminder, feel free to borrow mine. (It came to me, by the way, before an empty-stomached, early-morning ride and after a quarter pot of Italian roast a couple months ago.)
It is: To do certain stuff halfheartedly is often good enough — but certainly never good enough for health and fitness stuff.
Now you may think my use of “never” is a bit over the top or even that the entire saying is. But have you ever stopped to think about how much “stuff” really is interrelated and the health ramifications because of that?
The Potential, Eventual Harm of a Halfhearted Diet
Make no more than a feeble, halfhearted effort to eat properly now, for instance, and you could very well have a feebler mind later, according to a recent study presented during NUTRITION 2024, the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition. While it’s long been believed and essentially accepted as fact that diet affects the rate in which your brain ages, this yet-to-be-published study by Tufts University researchers breaks new ground, in part by its length. For seven decades — that’s right, seven decades — the study tracks more than 3,000 Brits born in 1946 by using data provided by the UK’s Medical Research Council, an organization that has collected health and medical information from British citizens for nearly 100 years.
That data consists of dietary information collected on those Brits at five different ages, four, 36, 43, 53, and 63; daily food journals; and the results of seven total cognitive ability tests, administered somewhere between the ages of eight and 69. The Tufts University researchers took all this info and turned it inside out. They used the Healthy Eating Index to create a composite score of each individual’s diet and then compared those scores in relation to the results of the cognitive ability tests.
In a Healthline article written by Gigen Mammoser about those results, Kelly Cara, PhD, author of the paper presented at the conference, explained, “Those who had the highest-quality diets tended to have better cognitive ability over time compared to their peers who ate unhealthy diets.” Two specifics supporting her statement are especially telling.
The Especially Telling Results of the Research
Only 8 percent of the participants with low-quality diet scores managed to sustain high-cognitive ability over time, while only 7 percent of those with a high-quality diet scores developed low-cognitive ability. Moreover, the participants with the lowest-quality diet scores also had the worst cognitive scores 47 percent of the time, while the participants with the highest-quality diet scores also had the best cognitive scores 48 percent of the time.
A Second Telling Study
Something else that’s especially telling is another study performed by researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia and published in the July issue of Aging and Disease. It tells of the good you can do for your brain as you age by exercising intensely at times — aka wholeheartedly.
The researchers recruited 151 people between the ages 65 and 85 and assigned them to one of three exercise regimens. Using heart rate as the determining factor, one group trained at a low intensity and worked on flexibility and balance; one at a medium intensity and briskly walked on a treadmill; the third incorporated elements of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) during treadmill runs by including four separate four-minute efforts of near-maximum exertion, 85 to 95 percent of their maximal heart rate. All groups trained for 36 to 45 minutes three times a week for six months, and all participants received brain scans at the start, end, and six months after the study. Their blood was tested monthly and so was their cognitive ability.
The cognitive abilities of those in the low-intensity and medium-intensity groups remained stable throughout the study. Considering the participants’ ages and the length of the study, that’s a victory in itself. The big winners, however, were those in the HIIT group. Their cognitive ability improved during the study and has remained that way for five years running.
The most “incredible” part to that, according to one professor involved in the study: That improvement of cognitive ability has remained even for those who haven’t continued HIIT workouts.
Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.
A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.
No surprise in the Australian study. Multiple prior studies have found that regular exercise helps the mind, both in mood and overall thought process.
OTOH- I would not read too much into the Tufts study on diet and cognition with aging. It has not yet been published for open peer review. Initial conclusions may change ‘upon further review’ (as the sports replay booth would say).